Election Results And Executive Presidency N Sathiya Moorthy(The writer is Director, Chennai Chapter of the Observer Research Foundation, the multi-disciplinary Indian public-policy think-tank, headquartered in New Delhi. email: sathiyam 54@gmail) President Sirisena was a leader without a party. Rajapaksa had the party but the nation’s voters have rejected him. They needed each other more than needing their poll-time allies. Some of Rajapaksa’s UPFA allies have begun complaining about his handing over the government meaning parliamentary majority without a fight. Others want him to continue as UPFA leader and prime ministerial candidate whenever parliamentary elections are held. Possibly alive to the possibilities, one-time Rajapaksa aide and present-day Foreign Minister Mangala Samaraweera of the UNP have followed up on his coup-bid charge with a formal police complaint. The possibilities are many. President Sirisena who had called for a national government, has either stop talking about it or is working on it, if the SLFP re-union is seen that way. Though he has declared his intention not to contest for a second term, he does not seem too eager to hand over power eternally to his UNP rival of decades. He does not want to go down in history as the one who sounded the death-knell for the party or so it seems. The parliamentary poll whenever held, thus promises to be tempting and challenging at the same time. Based on the presidential poll results, a media analysis has suggested that the Sirisena camp, as it stood at the time of presidential poll could manage 119 seats in the 225-member Parliament. The Rajapaksa-led UPFA would manage 106. The respective figures include National List MPs numbering 15 and 14. The SLFP merger would change all that. The decision for the SLFP to sit in the Opposition with outgoing Leader of the House and Senior Minister, Nimal Siripala de Silva now as the Leader of the Opposition means that the re-united SLFP does not want to be seen as having the cake and eating it, too or does it? The emerging proposition promises to be more exciting than the existing alliance, built near-exclusively for the presidential polls almost exclusively it would seem. Should this combine split for the parliamentary polls and it should not surprise any then the SLFP-UPFA could still retain its identity and maybe even parliamentary seat-share, to a substantial extent. The calculations for the non-UPFA coalition, substantially under the UNP, may not then have the projected numbers. The JVP outside-supporter for the Sirisena candidacy would continue to stay away from this combine but may still consider other alliance options. The JHU would be in greater demand than its vote-share would dictate to buttress the UNP combine’s image on the ethnic front in the Sinhala-Buddhist strong-holds on the one hand, and to deny the electoral comfort zone to them if it decided to go with the reunited SLFP. The UNP would have other issues too to consider. It may be a preferred ally for the TNA and the SLMC, among the parties and groups of minority communities than a reunited SLFP, where Rajapaksas’ shadow would be seen, at least until President Sirisena decided otherwise if at all. The UNP has good working equations with the SLMC down the line, and has long-term ambitions for Tamil votes and seats in the North. The CWC’s failure to deliver Upcountry Tamil votes to President Rajapaksa has open up the possibilities, also for the same reason in the immediate context. All this have thrown up a situation in which the Sirisena camp’s promise to abolish the Executive Presidency within the first 100 days in office and also introduce electoral reforms may come under the scanner, more than the minorities in particular may have been prepared for post-poll. The presidential polls witnessed the Tamils and the Muslims in the North and the East adding a high number of 650,000 votes more to Sirisena, against his final victory margin of 450,000. Add the 125,000-plus more votes that the Upcountry Tamils of Indian Origin (IOT) gave Sirisena in a single district of Nuwara Eliya, defying the CWC under then Minister Arumugan Thondaman, the figure goes up to 775,000. The unmentioned highlight of this election could be the wholesale defection of much of the near-five per cent Sinhala-Catholic votes, who too seem to have felt alienated from the Sinhala-Buddhist majority, possibly for the first time. The relatively low turn-out in the minorities provinces (72.3 per cent) of the North (69.43 per cent) and the East (75.04 per cent) did contribute to pulling down the national average to 81.5 per cent, after many Sinhala areas had polled upwards of 85 per cent, and at times closer to 90 per cent. Yet, the national figure was still more than the past averages of 75 percent, which again had been caused by the LTTE-ordered poll-boycott in the Tamil areas (2005) and the post-war, lower turn-out (2010). The expectations of the Tamils thus from the Sirisena-Ranil duo is thus more. Their commitment to the TNA’s line of united Sri Lanka is even more. It is anybody’s guess why the TNA did not say that it had freed from the LTTE when negotiating with the previous regime. There is also the question why the TNA brought in accountability issues half-way through negotiating a political solution within a united Sri Lanka as if it was an after-thought. The reluctance and reticence of the Rajapaksa government to continue negotiating with the TNA after this point may have owed its share. It is also unclear why the TNA should not join the government at the Centre now, particularly since President Sirisena has been repeatedly calling for a national government. They cannot continue to miss the bus time and again and also continue to build their ethnic castles in the air, skilled exclusively on what they do not know about government and governance than what they may have known, if at all. Having backed the Sirisena candidacy only on governance issue the TNA cannot now plead ignorance to his other election-time commitments, particularly to sensitive sections in the Sinhala South on the unitary State on the domestic front, and the UNHRC probe into accountability issues externally. Now that the TNA has made the point, the temptation for separatist sections of the SLT Diaspora, to hijack the moderate Tamils’ agenda as ever, and internationalise the ethnic issue even more is what it needs to fight more vigorously than any or all of the election battles nearer home! You have read a few selected excerpts. For further details read the full article: thesundayleader.lk/2015/01/18/election-results-and-executive-presidency/
Posted on: Fri, 23 Jan 2015 18:49:31 +0000
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